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The Wind I Killed Was the One I Made

A ten-year-old lapped me twice while I lay flat on the ice, hauling the sail tighter and going nowhere — convinced the boat was broken, when the broken thing was me.

Six Falls Chasing a Rock That Curls the Wrong Way

Curling

I fell down six times chasing a question nobody can answer: why a rock spinning one way politely curls the other. Turns out the physicists don't know either.

sport strategy science mechanical

The Moth Hijacks Its Own Attitude Control

Moth Trapping (Mothing)

Turns out a light trap doesn't lure moths at all — it hijacks their steering and lets them fly themselves into a box. I built one, and misidentified forty species by breakfast.

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Weathered Out, So I Learned to Subtract Toward Zero

Darts (501)

The ceiling was too low to fly, so I discovered that darts isn't a throwing game at all — it's a tree search you happen to conduct with tungsten.

sport strategy math analog

I Landed the Hit and Still Lost the Point

Foil Fencing

The green light came on and it wasn't mine — again. Turns out you don't get to hit in foil fencing. You get to *deserve* to hit, and I deserved nothing.

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The Wick Was Never a Fuse, It Was a Pump

Beeswax Candle Making

I rendered a tub of leftover honey cappings, dropped in a wick, and produced a candle with a navel that burned a hole straight down its own middle. Turns out wicks are pumps.

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Splitting a Log to Argue With Last Week's Circle

Green-Wood Canoe Paddle Carving

The canoe went in circles, so naturally I'm splitting a log with a froe — because the sensible fix was a better paddler, and I chose to carve a smarter paddle instead.

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My Left Hand Waits for Permission That Comes Too Late

Juggling

Three weeks off and my cortex quietly uninstalled the update. I shrank the cascade to its smallest honest beat — and the beat still beat me, one throw in four.

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Ninety Degrees of Regret Before the Paddle Behaved

Flatwater Canoeing

Traded a fly rod for a paddle, expecting a peaceful drift. Instead I spun a full circle and learned the beginner's correction stroke is genuinely, officially called the goon stroke.

outdoors sport nature mechanical

A 1912 Knot That Keeps the Horizon Honest

Kite Aerial Photography with a Picavet Rig

The camera never left the ground today. I spent the whole session on a step with a coat hanger and two eyelets, learning why a 1912 knot outperforms firmware at keeping a lens level.

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Watch the White Ball; It's the Only One That's Yours

Pool (Cue Sports)

Two scratches on the break before a man named Doug pointed out the obvious: the cue ball has to go *somewhere*, and until tonight I'd never once asked where.

sport science strategy math

Forty Rings In Before the Arithmetic Let Them Close

Chainmaille Weaving

I bought a sandwich bag of little metal rings at a market and got quietly furious to learn that whether they click together is decided, entirely, by long division.

making craft math mechanical art

Catch the Egg, Not the Trampoline: Landing the Toss

Diabolo Gyroscopic String Acceleration

Turns out a wooden ball on a string fixed the toss I'd been failing for a week: a taut string is a trampoline, so catch the diabolo like an egg — sink the knees and give.

sport performance mechanical science

Push the Vanishing Points Off the Page

Urban Sketching

Twenty years designing actual buildings, and I could not make a fuel bowser sit on the ground. A weather hold, a re-inked pen, and the humbling art of drawing what's in front of you.

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Stop Aiming, Bend Your Knees, and the Ball Lands

Kendama

Went in for carbon kite standoffs, left with a wooden ball on a string and no standoffs. Forty minutes of stabbing at it before I learned the spike isn't an aiming problem at all.

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